Category Archives: Darin Michael Shaw

Interactive Sermon 2005-2012

by

Image“Thousands of posts and more than a quarter-of-a-million site visitors and then he up and stopped!” That’s what they’ll say of my six and half years of interacting via Interactive Sermon. I’ve ended my blogging life.

Sort of. I’ve moved it to a micro-blogging and web-presence life.

Blogging was the new medium when I started. For a preacher and for a writer it was a vital outlet for… words. We use those. A lot. And a blog was a place where I could put words and have others see, read and interact with them.

At this point in my journey the micro-blogging venues are more appealing, more effective, and more efficient. So this is my life sans the blog. And it feels pretty good. Sure, there’s that ‘walked out of the house and realized you forgot to put on your pants’ sort of feeling. This was, after all, the first morning in 2372 days that I haven’t awakened thinking about a potential blog post. It will take some getting used to.

I’ll not make the site disappear for a while. And with all those posts, I’ll keep an archive here. Who knows what will become of it.

But welcome to my website. This is where I reside as a writer–online home to my fiction and non-fiction, abstract thoughts and other whatchamacallit. Oh, and please take this opportunity to follow me on Twitter and friend me on Facebook. There I pontificate in 140 characters. Don’t you wish my Sunday sermons were as short and to the point?

Online Office Hours

by

Starting back in April, I’ve been offering ONLINE OFFICE HOURS between 1 and 2:30pm EST on Friday afternoons. Because we spend so much of our time online these days, I’m hoping an online office will allow people to drop in on my while they’re in the course of their daily routine. We’ll be able to chat in a chat-room style dialogue or you’ll be able to reach me through more private channels–GoogleTalk, Skype or Facebook Chat.

Want to chat about the bible? The biggest buts in the bible? Life in general? The Red Sox, Celtics or Patriots?

Friday afternoons my office is located at www.interactivepastor.com. I hope you’ll stop in.

 

UPDATE: As of March 2012 I’ve shifted those online office hours to Friday mornings between 9 and 11am. I hope you’ll stop in!

Big Buts: Gospel of Matthew

by

The manuscript is finished. Thank you family and friends for your support and encouragement.  Here’s another excerpt, this from chapter 22:

Beep! Beep!

Warner Brothers introduced the world to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the late 1940s.  That silly coyote has been trying to trap the road runner ever since.  The comedic element to the cartoon is the ridiculous and backfiring methods the carnivore employs—ordering various items produced by the ACME Corporation—in his attempts to catch the elusive bird.  Every episode ends with the Road Runner’s celebratory “Beep! Beep!” and skedaddle, while the coyote nurses his self-inflicted injuries awaiting their next chase.

Enter the Pharisees.  By this point in the gospel we know that their every appearance is another attempt to trap Jesus.  Having licked their wounds from previous encounters, they arrive with a new device to try.  This attempt is political—they ask Jesus whether it is right to pay taxes to Rome.  They may have been giddy that they’d finally sprung a perfect trap. If Warner Brothers produced this episode, the ACME anvil would be suspended above the ‘X’ that marks the ‘splat’.

If Jesus said ‘pay the tax’ he would alienate a huge majority of people as paying the hated tax to Rome symbolized submission. But if Jesus said ‘don’t pay the tax’ he would have been at odds with the laws of Rome, and he could be arrested for sedition.  But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?” It’s at this point in the cartoon, by the way, that Wile E. Coyote would look up to see the anvil overhead, then down to notice the X under his feet—then look at the camera and sigh, resigned to his fate.  Once again, Jesus’ answer transcended the question.  He held up a Roman coin.  “Whose picture is this? And whose inscription?” he asked them.  “Caesar’s,” they replied.  Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” The Pharisees went away amazed.  “Beep! Beep!”